Radovan Karadžić

Date of Birth: 19.06.1945

Radovan Karadžić - Serbian politician, former president of the Republika Srpska in Bosnia. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia accuses Karadžić of genocide and war crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

Before the Balkan War. Born in Montenegro, where his mother still lives. His father has been dead for a long time. Karadžić's mother says that her son grew up as an obedient boy, helping her in the field and at home. According to her, he respected elderly people and always helped his classmates with their homework. In his youth, he wrote poems that many considered to be very talented.

In peacetime, he worked as a psychiatric consultant in a hospital in Sarajevo.

Views and evaluations. Radovan Karadžić played an important role in Serbia's relations with other Orthodox countries. He visited Russia and Greece several times. In February 1994, he proposed the establishment of a kind of Serbian-Greek confederation to Greece. This idea had previously been put forward by the former president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević.

The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs - a person whom many have long wanted to see in court. He is accused of organizing mass murders of Bosnian Muslims and Croats. According to the United Nations, Karadžić's forces killed more than 6000 Muslims (according to other estimates 7500 boys and male Muslims) in July 1995 in the city of Srebrenica as part of a 'campaign of demoralization and intimidation' and shelled the capital Bosnia-Sarajevo.

The capture of Radovan Karadžić and his extradition to the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia is one of the conditions for speeding up the negotiation process regarding Serbia's accession to the European Union. A reward of 5 million US dollars was offered for information about him and another former war criminal, Ratko Mladić.

After the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the Bosnian War, the former president of the Republika Srpska went underground. It was assumed that he was hiding in mountainous areas in southeastern Bosnia, where mainly Serbs live and is protected by loyal combat troops.

On July 21, 2008, Serbian authorities reported the arrest of Radovan Karadžić. Following this, former American UN representative Richard Holbrooke stated: 'One of the most terrible people in the world - the European bin Laden - has finally been captured.'

The former president of the Bosnian Serbs denies the charges against him and does not recognize the legitimacy of the UN Tribunal in The Hague, like Slobodan Milošević.

'If there had been a real court in The Hague, I would have been willing to go there or testify on television. But the Tribunal in The Hague is a political institution created to place the entire blame on the Serbs,' Karadžić told the newspaper 'Times' in February 1996.

In November 2009, the trial against Karadžić began, but the hearings were postponed several times at the request of the defendant. The former leader of the Serbs requested more time to review the case files. At the same time, he accused the court of incompetence. The trial continued on April 13, 2010, after the former president of the Republika Srpska was denied another postponement.

March 24, 2016 The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found Radovan Karadžić guilty on ten out of eleven counts and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for war crimes and genocide committed during the Bosnian Civil War from 1992-1995. In particular, Karadžić was held responsible for the organization of the mass murder of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. Karadžić was also found guilty of organizing attacks on civilians and murders during the siege of Sarajevo, taking UN personnel hostage. The only charge that was dismissed was the genocide committed in another area of Bosnia at the beginning of the war.

On April 23, 2018, Radovan Karadžić appealed the previously imposed 40-year prison sentence before the United Nations Court in The Hague.

After an appeal hearing, the sentence was reviewed and tightened: On March 20, 2019, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) sentenced Radovan Karadžić to life imprisonment.

Family. Radovan Karadžić's wife, Ljiljana, heads the Red Cross in the Serbian part of Bosnia. For security reasons, she did not live with her husband. It is known that she speaks very positively about her husband's party's achievements. She has stated several times how much Karadžić fears being handed over to the tribunal's prosecutors in The Hague.

Radovan Karadžić's son is a businessman and lived in Belgrade.

06.17.2022